Chapter X: Appendix: I—chronological Table 409 (9)

Others[85] hold that the original home of the Semites was in the south of Arabia whence they gradually overspread the peninsula, so that, as Sprenger expresses it, “All Semite are successive layers of Arabs.” The arguments for this theory are briefly given by Sayce:[86] “The Semitic traditions all point to Arabia as the original home of the race. It is the only part of the world which has remained exclusively Semites. The racial characteristics—intensity of faith, ferocity, exclusiveness, imagination—can best be explained by a desert origin.” De Goeje lays stress on the fine climate of Central Arabia and the splendid physical development of the Arab as additional proof together with the indisputable fact that “of all Semitic languages the Arabic approaches nearest to the original mother-tongue as was conclusively demonstrated by Professor Schrader of Berlin.”

The following table will show at a glance the position of Arabic in the Semitic family group, _dead languages being put in italics_. Arabic, ancient and modern belongs to the South Semitic group and at an early period supplanted the Himyaritic in Yemen, although the Mahri and Ehkeli dialects are still used in the mountains of Hadramaut.[87] It was practically the only conquering language on the list and is the only one that is growing in use.

TABLE OF SEMITIC LANGUAGES.

NORTHERN:
EASTERN
_Babylonian._
_Assyrian._
WESTERN (Aramaic)
Eastern
Syriac.
Mandean.
_Nabathean._
Western
_Samaritan._
_Jewish Aramaic_ (as Targums and Talmud).
_Palmyrene._
_Egyptian Aramaic._

CENTRAL:
_Phœnician._
Hebrew.
_Moabite_ and _Canaanitish dialects_.

SOUTHERN:
ARABIC (Ishmaelite)
One written language but Modern Dialects in speech.
Maltese [?].
Morocco.
Algerian, etc.
Egyptian.
Syrian.
Yemen.
Bagdadi.
Omanese, etc.
_Himyaritic_
Mahri.
_Ehkeli._
Ethiopic (Joktanite)
_Old Geez._
Tigre.
Tigrina.
Amharic.
Harari.

There are to-day over one hundred Arabic newspapers and magazines regularly published and which together have an immense circulation in all parts of the Arabic-speaking world.

While the Arabic language has now acknowledged supremacy above all its sisters, in its historical and literary development it was last of them all. Not until the seventh century of our era did Arabic become, in any sense, important. The language received its literary birthright and its inspiration through the illiterate prophet who could not read but who set all the Eastern world to studying his book. The Arabic literature of the days before Mohammed has a high literary character, but with all its beauty it was only the morning star that ushered in the sunrise. When once the Koran was promulgated, literature and grammar and the sciences all spoke Arabic. It was the renaissance of the dead and dying East. Whatever effect the Koran may have had on the social life and morals of a people, no one denies that it was the Koran and that alone which rescued Arabic from becoming a local idiom. Again this Koran was the unifying factor of the new religion, sweeping everything down before it; not only did it unify the hostile tribes of Arabia but melted all their dialects into one and established an ever-abiding classical standard for the remotest student of the language of revelation. We do not of course hold, as do the Arabs, that the Arabic of the Koran is absolutely without a parallel in grammatical purity and diction. The contrary has been proved by Nöldeke and Dozy. The latter states that the Koran is “full of bastard-Arabic and has many grammatical blunders, which are at present unnoticed, since the grammarians have kindly constructed rules or exceptions to include even these in the list of unapproachable style and perfection.”

The origin and history of the Arabic alphabet is exceedingly interesting. All writing was originally pictorial, the next stage being that of the ideogram. Perhaps a trace of this earliest writing still remains in the _wasms_ or tribal marks of the Bedouin. Scholars maintain that the earliest Semitic writing we possess of certain date is that on the Moabite Stone, discovered by the missionary Klein in 1868. Almost of equal age is the Cyprus and Sidon alphabet, and that of the Phœnicians, found on ancient coins and monuments. The date of this writing is put at 890 B. C. On these monuments and coins the system of orthography is already so carefully developed as to prove that the Semites understood the art centuries before that date. The oldest forms of these Semitic alphabets are in turn derived (Halévy, Nöldeke) from the Egyptian hieratic characters. The oldest inscriptions found in North Arabia by Doughty and Enting, in the Nabatean character, and in South Arabia by Halévy and others in Himyaritic character, are both written, like modern Arabic, from right to left. Although the characters do not resemble each other, this would seem to indicate a common origin. The intimate connection of the present Arabic alphabet with the Hebrew or Phœnician, is shown not only by the forms of the letters, but by their more ancient numerical arrangement called by the Arabs _Abjad_, and which corresponds with the Hebrew order.

Accounts differ even among the Arabs as to who adapted or invented the present Arabic alphabet from the older Cufic forms. Some even hold that they both developed simultaneously out of the Himyaritic. The Cufic, it is true, is found on old monuments and coins from the Persian Gulf to Spain, and is a square, apparently more crude kind of writing. But the cursive script (now called _Naskhi_) seems to have been in use also long before Mohammed’s time, the Arab historians to the contrary notwithstanding, for the exigencies of daily life. That writing was known at Mecca before the era of Mohammed is acknowledged by Moslem tradition and the close intercourse with Yemen long before that time would certainly indicate some knowledge of Himyaritic. Syriac and Hebrew were also known in Mecca and Medina because of the Jewish population, and it is not improbable that this may have had influence on the present form of the Arabic alphabet.

It is not without reason that Mohammed’s cognomen for Jew and Christian alike was, “the people of the _Book_.” At first, like the Hebrew, Arabic had no vowel-points or diacritical marks. In the earliest Cufic Koran manuscripts these have the form of accents, horizontal lines or even triangles. The Arabs tell many interesting stories about the cause and occasion of their invention by Abu Aswad ad Duili or by Nasr bin ’Asim. In each case the awful sin of mispronouncing a word in the Koran leads to the device of vowel-points as a future preventative. According to another tradition it was Hasan-el-Basri (who died A. H. 110) that first pointed the Koran text with the assistance of Yahya bin Yámar. The vowel-points, so called, were in reality the abbreviated weak-consonants and were placed, in accordance with the sound of these letters, when so pronounced. The vowel-points and diacritical marks are always found in copies of the Koran, but seldom in other books and never in epistolary writing. They are considered by the Arabs themselves as at best a necessary evil, except for grammarians and purists. The story is told that an elaborate piece of Arabic penmanship was once presented to the governor of Khorasan under the Caliph al Mamun, and that he exclaimed, “How beautiful this would be if there were not so much coriander seed scattered over it!”

The demand for perfect accuracy in copying the Koran in every detail of point and accent, led the Arabs to glorify the art of caligraphy, and, as they followed neither painting nor sculpture because of their creed, they naturally put all their artistic taste into their manuscripts. Brilliantly colored and adorned with gold on delicately tinted parchment, or paper, the fanciful chapter-headings and the elegant tracery of each letter in the book make such an old manuscript Koran a real work of art. Three names are recorded of those who in the early days of Islam were the Raphaels and Michael Angelos of the reed-pen; Wazir Muhammed bin Ali, Ali bin Hilal al Bauwab, and Abu-’d-Dur bin Yakut al Musta’sami. As time went by there arose various schools of this art; chiefly distinguished as the Magrib-Berber or Western, and the Turko-Arab or Eastern style. In the decorations of the Alhambra the western school shows some of its most finished art, while Damascus and Cairo mosques show the delicate “Arabesque” traceries of the lighter oriental school. It is in manuscripts, however, that the best work is found; some of these are of priceless value and exceeding beauty. Even to-day there are Arab penmen whose work commands a good price as _art_ and gives them a position in society as it did the monkey, described in the Arabian Nights, who improvised poetry in five styles of caligraphy for the astonished king.

The Arabic language is distinguished among those that know it for its _beauty_, and among those who are learning it for its _difficulty_. To the Arabs their language is not only the language of revelation, but of the Revealer himself. Allah speaks Arabic in heaven, and on the day of judgment will judge the world in this “language of the angels.” All other tongues are vastly inferior in grammatical construction, and what else could they be since the Koran with its classical perfection has existed before all words, uncreated, written on the preserved tablet in heaven, the daily delight of the innumerable company of angels! As Renan says, “among a people so preoccupied with language as the Arabs, the _language_ of the Koran became as it were a second religion, a sort of dogma inseparable from Islam.” But the innate beauty of the language is acknowledged by all who have made it a study, whether born on the soil of Arabia or educated in the universities of Europe. From the days of the Dutch scholars, De Dieu, Schultens, Schroeder and Scheid, and the Swiss Hottinger to the times of Nöldeke, Gesenius and Renan, the praises of Arabic have been proclaimed in Europe, and its study pursued with a devotion that almost amounted to a passion.

The elements of beauty in this language are many. There is first its logical structure, which, we are told, surpasses that of any other language. Even the order of the alphabet is more logical as regards form than the Hebrew; its grammar is altogether logical; the exceptions to its rules can be formed, so to say, into a syllogism. Palmer’s and Lansing’s grammars show how this logical structure can be discovered in the minutest detail, so that, _e. g._, the three short vowels control the forms not only, but the significance of roots, and are the key to the interpretation of all grammatical mysteries.

A second element of beauty is found in the lexical richness of the Arabic. Its boundless vocabulary and wealth of synonyms are universally acknowledged and admired. A dictionary is called a _Kamoos_ or “Deep Ocean” where “full many a gem of purest ray serene, the dark unfathomed caves” conceal for the diligent student. Renan tells of an Arab linguist who wrote a book on the 500 names given to the lion in literature; another gives 200 words for serpent. Firozabadi, the Arabian Webster, is said to have written a sort of supplement on the words for honey and to have left it incomplete at the _eightieth_ word; the same authority asserts that there are over 1,000 different terms in Arabic for sword and, judging from its use by the Arabs, this appears credible. De Hammer Purgstall, a German scholar, wrote a book on the words relating to the _camel_ and finds them, in Arabic literature, to the number of 5,744. But this remarkable exhibition loses some of its grandeur when truth compels us to state that many of the so-called synonyms are epithets changed into substantives or tropes accidentally employed by some poet to conform to his rhyme. It is also true that the wealth of synonym is limited in Arabic to a certain class of words; in other departments of thought, ethics for example, the language is wofully poor, not even having a distinctive word for conscience.

A third point of beauty in the Arabic language is its purity as compared with other Semitic languages or even all other languages. This was partly due to the geographical location of the Arabs and is still due to their early literature together with the Koran which has put a classical standard into the hands of every schoolboy and has prevented, by the law of religion, both development and deterioration. “While other languages of the same family became dead and while many of their forms and meanings changed or disappeared, the Arabic remained comparatively pure and intact excepting perhaps the temporary corruption which necessarily occurred during the Moslem conquests and foreign applications of the first four Caliphs.”[88]

The Arabic race occupied at first a circumscribed territory and came little into contact with the surrounding nations so that the forces which produce linguistic decay were absent. The only thing that will preserve a language pure next to isolation is a classical literature. English has changed less since Shakespeare’s time than it did in the interval between him and Chaucer. So too with Arabic. Had it not been for the Koran and its cognate literature, by this time the people of Syria, Egypt, Morocco and Oman would perhaps scarcely understand each other, and their written language would differ vastly; but the existence of this literature has kept the written language a unit and put a constant check on the vagaries of dialect.

The last, and chief element of beauty in the Arabic tongue is undoubtedly its wonderful literature. In poetry alone, the Arabians can challenge the world; in grammar, logic and rhetoric the number of their works is legion; while both at Bagdad and Cordova Arab historians and biographers filled whole libraries with their learning; in Cordova the royal library contained 400,000 volumes. Algebra and Astronomy are specially indebted to the Arabs; all the sciences received attention and some of them addition from the Arabian mind.

The Arabic tongue is not only beautiful but it is difficult, exceedingly difficult, to every one who attempts to really master it. One of the veteran missionaries of Egypt wrote, in 1864, “I would rather traverse Africa from Alexandria to the Cape of Good Hope, than undertake a second time to master the Arabic language.” The first difficulty is its correct pronunciation. Some Arabic letters cannot be transliterated into English, although certain grammars take infinite pains to accomplish the impossible. The gutturals belong to the desert and were doubtless borrowed from the camel when she complained of overloading. There are also one or two other letters which sorely try the patience of the beginner and in some cases remain obstinate to the end. Then the student soon learns, and the sooner the better, that Arabic is totally different in construction from European tongues and that “as far as the East is from the West” so far he must modify his ideas as to the correct way of expressing thought; and this means to disregard all notions of Indo-European grammar when in touch with the sons of Shem. Every word in the Arabic language is referred to a root of three letters. These roots are modified by prefixes, infixes and suffixes, according to definite models, so that from one root a host of words can be constructed and vice versa, from a compounded word all the servile letters and syllables must be eliminated to find the original root. This digging for roots and building up of roots is not a pastime at the outset because of the extent of the root-garden. Dozy’s _supplement_ to Lane’s Monumental Arabic Lexicon has 1,714 pages. So large in fact is the vocabulary of Arabic writers that the classics require copious explanatory notes for the Arabs themselves and some of them have written notes on the notes, to explain the difficult words used in explaining others more difficult. Moreover Arabic literature is so vast in its extent that acquaintance with the vocabulary of a dozen authors in one line of literature does not yet enable the student to appreciate the language of other works. You may be able to read the Koran tolerably well and understand its diction and yet when you turn to the Arabian Shakespeare or Milton find yourself literally at sea, in the _Kamoos_, and unable to understand a single line.

The regular verb in Arabic has fifteen conjugations, two voices, two tenses, and several moods; the irregular verbs are many and mysterious to the beginner although grammarians try to make them appear easier by demonstrating that all their irregularities are strictly logical, not the result of linguistic perversity but foreseen calculation and providential wisdom. Is it not “the language of the angels”?—even the broken-plurals?

As a final testimony to the difficulties of the Arabic language listen to Ion Keith Falconer. After passing the Semitic Languages Tripos at Cambridge under Dr. Wright, and taking a special course in Arabic at Leipzig, he writes from Assiut in Egypt: “I am getting on in Arabic, but it is most appallingly hard.... I have learned a good deal and can make myself intelligible to servants and porters. I have a teacher every day for two hours and translate from a child’s reading book.” After _five years_ of further study he writes once more from Aden (Jan. 17, 1886), “I am learning to speak Arabic quite nicely but it will be long before I can deliver real discourses.” And this man was an all-around scholar with a passion for languages. Without any doubt Arabic _is_ one of the most difficult languages in the world to acquire with any degree of fluency, and progress in its attainment means ceaseless plodding and endless diligence.

XXV

THE LITERATURE OF THE ARABS

The literature of the Arabs is either pre-Islamic or post-Islamic; the former has as its chief classics the Muallakāt or seven suspended poems, the latter finds its centre and apex as well as its origin and inspiration in the Koran. The seven ancient poems, still extant, are also called _Muthahabat_ or the “golden poems,” and it is generally admitted by Arabic scholars that this was indeed the golden age of Arab literature. Zuhair, Zarafah, Imru-l-Kais, Amru-ibn-Kulsum, Al Harith, ’Antar and Labid were the authors of these poems and all but the last were idolaters, and belong to what the conceit of Islam calls “the Time of Ignorance.” These poems furnished the model ever afterward for later writers and, according to Baron de Slane, are remarkable for their perfection of form and exhibit a high degree of linguistic culture.

But the Koran has eclipsed all that ever went before it or came after it in the eyes of the Arabs. It is the paragon of literary perfection as well as of moral beauty. Its style is inimitable because it is Divine in the highest sense of the word. To criticise its diction is to be guilty of blasphemy and to compare it with other literature is to commit sacrilege. There is no doubt that the chief charm of the Koran from a literary standpoint is its musical jingle and cadence. It is such as the Arabs, the earliest masters of rhyme, love, and servilely imitate in all their later prose works. Our English translations of the Koran, although accurate, (and even idiomatic, as Palmer’s) cannot reproduce this; in consequence the book appears vapid, monotonous and to the last degree wearisome and uninteresting. Attempts have been made by Burton and others to acquaint English readers with this element of beauty in Mohammed’s revelation. The following[89] is almost equal to the Arabic itself, and, to say the least, sounds more interesting than Sale’s prose version of the same passage:

“I swear by the splendor of light
And by the silence of night
That the Lord shall never forsake thee
Nor in His hatred take thee;
Truly for thee shall be winning
Better than all beginning
Soon shall the Lord console thee, grief no longer control thee,
And fear no longer cajole thee.
Thou wert an orphan-boy, yet the Lord found room for thy head.
When thy feet went astray, were they not to the right path led?
Did He not find thee poor, yet riches around thee spread?
Then on the orphan-boy, let thy proud foot never tread,
And never turn away the beggar who asks for bread,
But of the Lord’s bounty ever let praise be sung and said.”

It is not to be expected that all the transcendant excellencies and miraculous beauties which Moslem commentators find in the Koran should unveil themselves to cold, unsympathizing western gaze, but that the book has a certain literary beauty no one can deny who has read it in the original. As Penrice says in his preface to his Dictionary of the Koran, “Beauties there are many and great; ideas highly poetical are clothed in rich and appropriate language, which not unfrequently rises to a sublimity far beyond the reach of any translation; but it is unfortunately the case that many of those graces which present themselves to the admiration of the finished scholar are but so many stumbling-blocks in the way of the beginner; the marvellous conciseness which adds so greatly to the force and energy of its expressions cannot fail to perplex him while the frequent use of the ellipse leaves in his mind a feeling of vagueness not altogether out of character in a work of its oracular and _soi-disant_ prophetic nature.”

The greatest literary treasure of the Arabs next to the Koran is the _Makāmat_ of Al Hariri. No one of polite scholarship would dare profess ignorance of this great classic, and the reader of these “Assemblies” is introduced to every branch of Mohammedan learning—poetry, history, antiquities, theology and law. Recently Hariri has been translated into English by Chenery and an earlier translation by Preston has also been printed. Stanley Lane-Poole reviewing these translations thus characterizes this Shakespeare of the Arabic world:

“It is difficult, no doubt, for most Westerns to appreciate the beauties of this celebrated classic. There is no cohesion, no connecting idea, between the fifty separate ‘Assemblies,’ beyond the regular reappearance of an egregious Tartufe, called Abu-Zeyd, a Bohemian of brilliant parts and absolutely no conscience, who consistently extracts alms from assemblies of people in various cities, by preaching eloquent discourses of the highest piety and morality, and then goes off with his spoils to indulge secretly in triumphant and unhallowed revels. Even in this framework there is no attempt at originality; it is borrowed from Hamadâni, the ‘Wonder of the Age.’ The excellence lies in the perfect finish: the matter is nothing; the charm consists in the form alone. Yet this form is, to English readers, exotic and artificial. Among its special merits, in the eyes of Easterns, is the perpetual employment of rimed prose. To us this is apt to seem at once monotonous and strained, with its antithetic balance in sense, and jingle of sound; but to the Arabs, as to many primitive peoples, either riming or assonant prose was from early times a natural mode of impassioned and impressive speech. It is the mode adopted constantly and without strain in the Koran, and it is the mode into which an historian, such as Ibn-el-Athîr, falls naturally when he waxes eloquent over a great victory or a famous deed....

“But if we do not care for rimed prose, there is plenty besides in Hariri to minister to varied tastes. In these wonderful ‘Assemblies,’ we shall find every kind of literary form, except the shambling and the vulgar. Pagan rhetoric, Moslem exhortation, simple verse, elaborate ode, everything that the immeasurable flexibility of the Arabic tongue and the curious art of a fastidious scholar could achieve—all is here, and we may take our choice.”

What is said by this scholarly critic of Hariri holds true of most Arabic poetry, it lacks unity of idea and sobriety of expression. All is intense. Every beautiful eye is a narcissus; tears are pearls; teeth are pearls or hail-stones; lips are rubies; the gums, pomegranate blossoms; piercing eyes are swords, and the eyelids, scabbards; a mole is an ant creeping to suck the honey from the lips; a handsome face is a full-moon; an erect form is the letter alif as penned by Wazir Muhammed; black hair is night; the waist is a willow-branch or a lance, and love is always passion. Far-fetched allusions abound and the _sense_ at every turn must do homage to the _sound_. In the judgment of Baron de Slane the two notable exceptions to the rule are Al Mutanabbi and Ibn El Farid who exhibit a daring and surprising originality often approaching the sublime and, in the case of the latter, mystic reveries and spiritual beauties of no mean order.

The influence of the Arabic language on other tongues and peoples has also been great, ever since the rise of Islam. The Persian language adopted the Arabic alphabet and a large number of Arabic words and phrases; so that, as Renan remarks, in some Persian books all the words are Arabic and only the grammar remains in the vernacular. As for Hindustani, three-fourths of its vocabulary consists of Arabic words or Arabic words derived through the Persian. The Turkish language also is indebted for many words taken from the Arabic and uses the Arabic alphabet. The Malay language, with the Moslem conquest, was also touched by Arabic influence and likewise adopted its alphabet. In Africa its influence was yet more strongly felt. The language extended over all the northern half of the continent and is still growing in use to-day. The geographical nomenclature of the interior is Arabic and Arabs preceded Livingstone, Stanley and Speke in all their journeys. The languages of the southern Sudan, the Hausa, and even those of Guinea borrowed largely from the Arabic. Europe itself did not escape the influence of the conquering Semitic tongue. Spanish and Portuguese betray a vast number of Arabic words and idioms. French and English are also indebted to Arabic in no small degree for many scientific and technical words introduced at the time of the crusades and even earlier. Here is a partial list of those which we received directly or indirectly from the Arab tongue, as given in Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary and arranged into sentences; every word in italics is of Arabic origin.

“The _Nabob Mohammedan Magazine_ relates, that years after the _Hegira_, a _saracen caliph_ or _Mameluke sultan_, sat with his _mussulman emir_, _admiral_, _vizier_, _moslem mufti_ and _Koran-munshee_, (who knew _alchemy_ and _algebra_ and could _cipher_ the _azimuth_ and _nadir_ to _zero_), _sheikh_ of the _hareem_, _muezzin_ and _tariff-dragoman_ of the _arsenal_, under a _carob_-tree, on _sofas_ of _mohair-mattress_ covered with _jerboa-_ and _gazelle-skins_, drinking _coffee_, _saffron-elixer_, _arrack_, _alcohol_ and _syrup_ of _senna, carraway_ and _sumach_. For tonic they also had _rose-attar_, _artichokes_, _alkaline-nitre_ in _myrrh_, _taraxacum_, _otto-sherbet_, and _naphtha_ in _amber_ cups. The _Sultan’s_ infant daughter wore a _carmine cotton_ and-_muslin chemise_ or _diaper_ with a _civet talisman_ and _jasper amulet_; she played a _Tartar lute_. Suddenly a _giaour Bedouin assassin_ with an _assagai_ and _hookah-masque_ came down on them from behind an _alcove_ of the neighboring _arabesque mosque minaret_ like a _sirocco-simoon_ or _monsoon_ and killed them all.”

Most of these words came from the Arabic through other languages such as French and Spanish; others were directly transferred from the Arabic to English; and still others have passed the long journey from Arabic to Greek, to Latin, to Italian, to French and thence to English. The word _magazine_ is perhaps the best example of how an Arabic-root found shelter in the soil of all the European languages and grew into manifold significations from its original meaning with the Arabs, _ghazana_ = to collect or store.

In modern days, especially since the opening of the Suez canal, the English language is beginning to exert its influence on Arabic. In Egypt, Syria and the Persian Gulf many English commercial terms are being adopted into the language and the newspapers spread their use everywhere.

Last, but not least, there is the immense, incalculable influence on the Arabic-tongue for all time exerted by the toil and sacrifice of the early missionaries to Syria through their college and press in giving to the world a modern Christian and scientific literature and that crowning work of Drs. Eli Smith and C. V. A. Van Dyck—the Arabic Bible. The mission press at Beirut has four hundred and eighty three volumes on its catalogue and prints about twenty-five million pages annually.[90] The Arabic Bible “one of the noblest literally monuments of the age” will yet prove a mighty influence in purifying and ennobling the language and preserving its classical diction to the utmost bounds of the Arab-world. There was only one Koran and there will be only one Arabic Bible—the finished product of American scholarship and her best gift to the Mohammedan world.

XXVI

THE ARAB

“Children of Shem! Firstborn of Noah’s race
And still forever children; at the door
Of Eden found, unconscious of disgrace,
And loitering on while all are gone before;
Too proud to dig, too careless to be poor
Taking the gifts of God in thanklessness,
Not rendering aught, nor supplicating more,
Nor arguing with Him if He hide His face.
Yours is the rain and sunshine, and the way
Of an old wisdom, by our world forgot,
The courage of a day which knew not death;
Well may we sons of Japhet, in dismay,
Pause in our vain mad fight for life and breath,
Beholding you—I bow and reason not”—_Anon._

Concerning the origin of the tribes and people that now inhabit the Arabian peninsula there is disagreement among the learned. It is generally held that the original tribes of Northern Arabia are descendants of Ishmael. This is also the tradition of all Arab historians. As to the South Arabians, who occupied their highlands with the Hadramaut coast for centuries before the Ishmaelites appeared on the scene there are two opinions. Some believe them to be descendants of Joktan (Arabic _Kahtan_) the son of Heber and therefore, like the Northern Arabs, true Semites. Others think that the earliest inhabitants of South Arabia were Cushites or Hamitic; while some German scholars hold that in the earlier Arabs the children of Joktan and of Cush were blended into one race.

Among the Ishmaelites are included not only Ishmael’s direct descendants through the twelve princes,[91] but the Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, Midianites and probably other cognate tribes. The names of the sons of Ishmael in relation to their settlements and the traces of these names in modern Arabia is a subject which has been taken up by Bible dictionaries but which still offers an interesting field for further study. The Arabs themselves have always claimed Abrahamic descent for the tribes of the north. The age-long, racial animosity between the Yemenites and Māadites seems to confirm the theory of two distinct races inhabiting the peninsula from very early times; and they remain distinct until to-day in spite of a common language and a common religion. “The animosity of these two races to each other is unaccountable but invincible. Like two chemical products which instantly explode when placed in contact, so has it always been found impossible for Yemenite and Māadite to live quietly together. At the present day the Yemenite in the vicinity of Jerusalem detests the Māadite of Hebron, and when questioned as to the reason of their eternal enmity has no other reply but that it has been so from time immemorial. In the time of the Caliphs the territory of Damascus was desolated by a murderous war for two years, because a Māadite had taken a lemon from the garden of a Yemenite. The province of Murcia in Spain was deluged with blood for seven years because a Māadite inadvertently plucked a Yemenite vine-leaf. It was a passion which surmounted every tie of affection or interest. ‘You have prayed for your father: why do you not pray for your mother?’ a Yemenite was asked near the Kaaba. ‘For my mother!’ said the Yemenite, ‘How could I? She was of the race of Māad.’”[92]

The Yemenites at a very early period founded the strong and opulent Himyarite Kingdom. The Himyarites were the navigators of the East and they were celebrated for their skill in manufacture as well as for enterprise in commerce; they had a written language, inscriptions in which were discovered all over south Arabia during the present century. The Māadite or Ishmaelite Arabs on the contrary were more nomad in their habits and were masters of the caravans which carried the enormous overland trade by the two great trunk-lines of antiquity, from the East to the West. One of these lines extended from Aden, (Arabia Emporium of Ptolemy) along the western part of the peninsula and through Yemen to Egypt; the other extended from Babylon to Tadmor and Damascus. A third route, nearly as important, was also in the hands of the Ishmaelite Arabs, by Wady Rumma and Nejd to the old capital of the Himyarites, Mareb.[93] These caravans unified the Arabian peninsula and fused into one its two peoples; the northern Arabs receiving somewhat of the southern civilization and the southern Arabs adopting the language of the north. But the decline in the caravan trade brought disaster to Arabia; the ship of the desert found a competitor in the ships of the sea. Old settlements were broken up, great cities, which flourished because of overland trade, were abandoned and whole tribes were reduced from opulence to poverty. In this time of transition, long before the birth of Mohammed, the Arabic nation as it is known to modern history seems to have been formed.

The modern Arabs classify themselves into Bedouins and town-dwellers; or, in their own poetic way, _ahl el beit_ and _ahl el h’eit_, “the people of the tent,” and “the people of the wall.” But this classification is hardly sufficient, although it has been generally adopted by writers on Arabia. Edson L. Clark, in his book, The Arabs and the Turks, gives five classes: “Beginning at the lowest round of the ladder we have first the sedentary or settled Arabs. .. who though still many of them dwelling in tents have become cultivators of the soil. By their nomadic brethren these settled Arabs are thoroughly despised as degraded and denationalized by the change in their mode of life. Secondly, the wandering tribes in the neighborhood of the settled districts, and in constant intercourse with their inhabitants. Both these classes, but more especially the latter, are thoroughly demoralized.... The third class consists of the Arabs of the Turkish towns and villages; but they too are a degenerate class both in language and character.... The fourth class consists of the inhabitants of the towns and villages of Arabia proper, who by their peculiar situation have remained more secluded from the rest of the world than even the wandering tribes.... Finally the great nomadic tribes of the interior, still preserving unchanged the primitive character, habits and customs of their race.” This last class and this alone are the real Bedouins.

In addition to this classification according to civilization there is the universal genealogical classification; and no people in the world are fonder of genealogies than the Arabs. The names of tribes and families go back, in many cases to pre-islamic days. The earliest tribal-names, therefore, are either taken from animals or totem-names, like Panthers, Dogs, Lizards, _e. g._, _Anmar Kilab_, _Dibab_, etc.; place-names transformed afterward by the genealogists into ancestors, _e. g._, _Hadramaut_, _Hauāb_; or from idols and idol-worship, _e. g._, _Abd el Kais_, _Abd al Lat_, etc. But the later system of genealogies as given by the Arabs are utterly unreliable because they are so evidently artificial. The backbone of the system was the pedigree of Mohammed and this is notoriously untrustworthy. “Dummy ancestors” were inserted in order to connect a particular but unimportant tribe with a distinguished one, and Hamdani himself tells us that he found it a common practice of obscure desert groups to call themselves by the name of some more famous tribe.[94]

Character is difficult to define. To depict the moral physiognomy of a nation and their physical traits in such a way that nothing important is omitted and no single characteristic exaggerated at the cost of others. This difficulty is increased in the case of the Arabs, by their twofold origin and their present twofold civilization. That which is true of the town-dweller, is not always true of the Bedouin and vice versa. Moreover the influence of the neighboring countries must be taken into account. Eastern Arabia has taken color by long contact with Persia; this is seen in speech, architecture, food and dress. Southern Arabia, especially Hadramaut, has absorbed East Indian ideas. While Western Arabia, especially Hejaz, shows in many ways its proximity to Egypt. Not losing sight of these distinctions, which will account for many exceptions to the general statements made, what is the character of the Arabs?

Physically, they are undoubtedly one of the strongest and noblest races of the world. Baron de Larrey, surgeon-general of the first Napoleon, in his expeditions to Egypt and Syria, says: “Their physical structure is in all respects more perfect than that of Europeans; their organs of sense exquisitely acute, their size above the average of men in general, their figure robust and elegant, the color brown; their intelligence proportionate to their physical perfection, and without doubt superior, other things being equal, to that of other nations.”

The typical Arab face is round-oval, but the general leanness of the features detracts from its regularity; the bones are prominent; the eyebrows long and bushy; the eye small, deep-set, fiery black or a dark, deep brown. The face expresses half dignity, half cunning, and is not unkindly, although never smiling or benignant. The teeth are white, even, short and broad. The Arabs have very scanty beards as a rule, but those of the towns often cultivate a patriarchal beard like the traditional beard of the prophet. The figure is well-knit, muscular, long-limbed, never fat. The arms and legs are thin, almost shrunken, but with muscles like whip-cords. As young men the Bedouins are often good-looking, with bright eyes and dark hair, but the constant habit of frowning to protect the eyes from the glare of the sun, soon gives the face a fierce aspect; at forty their beards turn grey and at fifty they appear old men.

It is a common mistake to consider the Arabs democratic in their ideas of society. The genuine Arab was and is always an aristocrat. Feuds originate about the precedence of one family or tribe over another; marriage is only allowed between tribes or clans of equal standing; the whole system of sheikh-government is an aristocratic idea; and as final proof there still exists a species of caste in South Arabia, while in North Arabia the Ma’adan Arabs of Mesopotamia and the _Suleyb_ of the desert are little better than Pariahs as regards their neighbors. It is with a heavy heart that any Arab sees set over him a man of less noble extraction than himself. The religion of Arabia has made its people fanatics, although according to Nöldeke, “fanaticism is characteristic of all Semitic religions.” But he forgets the real distinction between intolerance of another religion on ethical grounds as in the case of Judaism, and the infinitely hard, one-sided, crude exclusiveness of Islam.

The Arabs rarely have the power of taking in complex unities at a glance; the talent for arrangement is absent. An Arab carpenter cannot draw a right angle, nor can an Arab servant lay a tablecloth square on the table. The old Arab temple called a cube (Kaaba) has _none_ of its sides or angles equal; their houses show the same lack of the “carpenter’s eye” to-day. Streets are seldom parallel, even the street, so-called, was not _straight_ in Damascus. The Arab mind loves units, not unity; they are good soldiers, but poor generals; there is no partnership in business; and no public spirit; each man lives for himself. That is the reason why Yemen cannot shake off the yoke of the Turk, and this explains why the smallest towns in Arabia have a great many little mosques. The Arab has a keen eye for particulars, great subjectivity, nervous restlessness, deep passion and inward feeling, and yet joined with strong conservatism and love of the past. In everything he follows old models and traditions; witness their poetry and their tent-life—in Arab phrase, termed their “houses of hair” and their “houses of poetry.” As a result of their language-structure, the Arabs have naturally a strong tendency to a pointed, sharp speech of epigrammatic brevity, but also go to the other extreme of ornate tautology. The former is characteristic of the desert; the latter of the towns. Eloquence and poetry are still worshipped. The only fine art which Arabs admire is that of caligraphy; and those who have seen finished specimens of an Arab master-penman, must acknowledge that in them are all the elements of painting and sculpture.

The Arabs are polite, good-natured, lively, manly, patient, courageous and hospitable to a fault. They are also contentious, untruthful, sensuous, distrustful, covetous, proud and superstitious. One must always keep in mind this paradox in dealing with an Arab. As Clark expresses it, “an Arab will lie and cheat, and swear any number of false oaths, in a pecuniary transaction; but when once his faith is pledged he can be implicitly trusted, even to the last extremity.” There are Arab oaths such as _wallah_, which are intended to confirm falsehoods and signify nothing. There are others, such as the threefold oath, with _wa_, _bi_ and _ti_ as particles of swearing, which not even the vilest robber among them dare break. Grammatically, the two oaths are nearly the same.

Robbery is a fine art among the nomads; but the high-minded Arab robs lawfully, honestly and honorably. He will not attack his victims in the night; he tries to avoid all bloodshed by coming with overwhelming force; and if his enterprise miscarries, he boldly enters the first tent possible, proclaims his true character and asks protection. The _Dakheil_, or privilege of sanctuary, the salt covenant, the blood covenant and the sacredness of the guest, all prove that the Arabs are trustworthy. And yet, in the ordinary affairs of life, lying and deception are the rule and seldom the exception. The true Arab is niggardly when he buys, and will haggle for hours to reduce a price; and yet he is prodigal and lavish in giving away his goods to prove his hospitality.

According to Burckhardt, the Arab is the only real lover of the Orient; if he limits this to the Bedouin-Arab he is correct. In matters of love and marriage the Arab of the towns is what Mohammed, the Meccan merchant was, after the death of the old lady Khadijah. But Arabic poetry of the times of ignorance does occasionally breathe the true tale of love and chivalry; and the desert Arabs as a rule are not polygamists nor given to divorce.

It was a law among the ancient Arabs that whoever sheds the blood of a man owes blood on that account to the family of the slain. This law of blood-revenge was confirmed by the Koran and is a sacred right everywhere in Arabia. An Arab is considered degenerate who accepts a fine or any consideration save blood for blood. This law is both the cause of continual feuds, and tends to terminate them without much bloodshed. Arabs of the town and of the desert will quarrel for hours without coming to blows; it is not cowardice that prevents an open encounter, but the fear of shedding blood and blood-revenge.

Family life among the Arabs is best studied by looking at child-life in the desert and at the position of women among the Bedouin and the town-dwellers. In no part of the world does the newborn child meet less preparation for its reception than among the Bedouin. A land bare of many blessings, general poverty and the law of the survival of the fittest, has made the Arab mother stern of heart. In the open desert under the shade of an acacia bush or behind a camel, the Arab baby first sees the daylight. As soon as it is born the mother herself rubs and cleans the child with sand, places it in her handkerchief and carries it home. She suckles the child for a short period, and at the age of four months it already drinks profusely of camels’ milk. A name is given to the infant immediately; generally from some trifling incident connected with its birth, or from some object which attracts the mother’s fancy. Moslem names such as Hassan Ali or Fatimah, are extremely uncommon among the true Bedouins; although Mohammed is sometimes given. Beside his own peculiar name every Bedouin boy is called by the name of his father and tribe. And what is more remarkable, boys are often called after their sisters, _e. g._, _Akhoo Noorah_, the brother of Noorah. Girls’ names are taken from the constellations, birds, or desert animals like _Gazelle_.

In education the Arab is a true child of nature. His parents leave him to his own sweet will; they seldom chastise and seldom praise. Trained from birth in the hard school of nomad life, fatigue and danger do contribute much to his education. Burckhardt says, “I have seen parties of naked boys playing at noonday upon the burning sand in the middle of summer, running until they had fatigued themselves, and when they returned to their fathers’ tents they were scolded for not continuing the exercise. Instead of teaching the boy civil manners, the father desires him to beat and pelt the strangers who come to the tent; to steal or secrete some trifling article belonging to them. The more saucy and impudent children are the more they are praised since this is taken as an indication of future enterprise and warlike disposition. Bedouin children, male and female, go unclad and play together until their sixth year. The first child’s festival is that of circumcision. At the age of seven years the day is fixed, sheep are killed and a large dish of food is cooked. Women accompany the operation with a loud song and afterward there is dancing and horseback riding and encounters with lances. The girls adorn themselves with cheap jewelry and tent-poles are decorated with ostrich feathers. Altogether it is a gala-day.

The Bedouin children have few toys but they manage to amuse themselves with many games. I have seen a group of happy children, each with a pet locust on a bit of string, watching whose steed should win the race. The boys make music out of desert-grass winding it in curious fashion to resemble a horn, and calling it _Masoor_. In Yemen and Nejd a sling, like David’s, with pebbles from the brook is a lad’s first weapon. Afterward he acquires a lance and perhaps an old discarded bowie-knife. The children of the desert have no books.[95] But, of paper, they have the Book of Nature. This magnificent picture book is never more diligently studied than by those little dark eyes which watch the sheep at pasture or count the stars in the blue abyss from their perch on a lofty camel’s saddle in the midnight journeyings.

When the Bedouin lad grows up, and begins to swear by the few straggling hairs on his chin, he cannot read a letter, but he knows men and he knows the desert. The talk heard at night around the Sheikh’s tent or the acacia-brush fireside is much like the wisdom of the book of Job. A philosophy of submission to the world as it is; a deification of stoicism or patience; a profound trust that all will end well at last. Sad to say even the little nomads, with their ignorance of all religion, share in the fanatical antagonism of their elders toward the Christian religion and Christians. One of their games, in Nejd, is to draw a cross on the desert sand and then defile it; they learn that all outside the pale of Mohammed’s creed are _kafirs_ and to please Allah are glad to throw stones at any wayfaring Nasrani. Little do the Bedouins and still less do their children, however, know of the religion of Islam. The Koran is not a book for children’s minds and of such is not the kingdom of Mohammed.

The Bedouin child early puts away childish things. To western eyes the children of Arabia appear like little old men and women; and the grown-up people have minds like children. This is another paradox of the Arab-character. At ten years the boy is sent to drive camels and the girl to herd sheep; at fifteen they are both on the way to matrimony. He wears the garb of a man and boasts a matchlock; she takes to spinning camel hair and sings the songs of the past. Their brief childhood is over. In the towns marriage takes place even earlier; and there are boys of eighteen who have already divorced two wives.

Among the Bedouins polygamy is not common nor is it among the poorer Arabs of the towns. The marriage ceremony among the Bedouins is as simple as it is long and complex among the townsmen. After the negotiations which precede the marriage contract, the bridegroom comes with a lamb in his arms to the tent of the girl’s father and there cuts the lamb’s throat before witnesses. As soon as the blood falls on the ground the contract is sealed; feasting and dancing follow, and at night the bride is conducted to the bridegroom’s tent where he is awaiting her arrival. Dowrys are paid more generally and more largely in the towns than in the desert. Among certain Arab tribes a demand of money for the hand of a bride would be deemed scandalous. From a western standpoint the women of the Bedouin stand on a higher platform of liberty and justice than those of the towns where the Koran has done its work on one half of society to repress intellect and degrade affection, and sensualize the sexual relation to the last degree. On the other hand divorce is perhaps more common among the Bedouins,[96] than among the city Arabs. Burckhardt met Arabs not yet forty-five years of age who were known to have had above fifty wives. Concerning the marriage-contract in the towns, the ceremony, the divorce proceedings, and the methods by which that is made legal which even the lax law of Islam condemns, the less said the better.

On the position of women in Arabia we quote four unimpeachable witnesses who have nothing in common save their knowledge of the subject; there is truth on both sides where they differ; where they agree there is no question of certainty as to the fact.

DOUGHTY, the Christian explorer, whose volumes are a mine of information says:[97] “The female is of all animals the better, say the Arabians, save only in mankind. Upon the human female the Semites cast all their blame. Hers is, they think, a maleficent nature, and the Arabs complain that ‘she has seven lives.’ The Arabs are contrary to womankind, upon whom they would have God’s curse; some, they say, are poisoners of husbands and there are many adulteresses.... The _horma_ [_i. e._, woman] they would have under subjection; admitted to an equality, the ineptitude of her evil nature will break forth. They check her all day at home and let her never be enfranchised from servitude. The veil and the jealous lattice are rather of the obscene Mohammedan austerity in the towns; among the mild tent-dwellers in the open wilderness the housewives have a liberty as where all are kindred; yet their hareem are now seen in the most Arabian tribes half-veiled.”

BURCKHARDT, the time-honored authority on things Arabian, writes: “The Bedouins are jealous of their women, but do not prevent them from laughing and talking with strangers. It seldom happens that a Bedouin strikes his wife; if he does so she calls loudly on her _wasy_ or protector who pacifies the husband and makes him listen to reason.... The wife and daughters perform all the domestic business. They grind the wheat in the handmill or pound it in the mortar; they prepare the breakfast and dinner; knead and bake the bread; make butter, fetch water, work at the loom, mend the tent-covering and are, it must be owned, indefatigable. While the husband or brother sits before the tent smoking his pipe.”

LADY ANN BLUNT, who travelled among the tribes of the Euphrates valley with her husband, speaks thus from a woman’s standpoint. “Of the Bedouin women a shorter description will be enough. As girls they are pretty in a wild picturesque way and almost always have cheerful, good-natured faces. They are hard-working and hard-worked, doing all the labor of the camp.... They live apart from the men but are in no way shut up or put under restraint. In the morning they all go out to gather wood for the day, and whenever we have met them so employed they have seemed in the highest possible spirits.... In mental qualities the women of the desert are far below the men, their range of ideas being extremely limited. Some few of them, however, get real influence over their husbands and even, through them, over their tribes. In more than one Sheikh’s tent it is in the woman’s half of it that the politics of the tribe are settled.”

SNOUCK HURGRONJE, the Dutch traveller who spent an entire year (1884-85) in Mecca thus characterizes the position of women in Arabian towns:[98]